Airline Gives Family Letters From 1941 After They Were Left On Flight

We all have something that we treasure, and for one family in Ohio, it was letters that were written in the 1940s.

Unfortunately, they left them on an airline flight but the employees at Southwest Airlines were more than happy to return them.

According to Fox Business, a statement from a Southwest Airlines spokesperson said there was some baggage that was left at Chicago Midway International Airport. They had been put in the lost and found, but inside of the baggage were letters dating from 1941.

Sarah Haffner was working in the department that day when she saw one of the letters. She recognized that they were something special, so she didn’t keep them with the other items in lost and found. At first, no one came to pick the letters up so she locked them in an office safe.

Not being satisfied to simply let them sit in the safe, Haffner reviewed some of the letters to find information that would lead her to the family that left them on the flight. The problem was, so much time had elapsed since the time that the letters were written, there wasn’t much to go on.

That is when she saw a stamp on one of the envelopes dated August 2021.

The return address on that envelope gave her a name to start with: Rachel DeGolia. Unfortunately, she wasn’t listed in the database kept by the airlines but they were able to find a phone number and that phone number yielded some results.

It seems as if her name wasn’t in the system because her brother, Carl, was traveling with the letters. Her late mother had written the letters, which is why they were stored in an envelope reading: “Moms letters to Phil.”

DeGolia said to Fox Business: “We were so thankful and relieved to find out that the Southwest baggage staff saved the letters from our mother that my brother had inadvertently left on the plane and figured out how to contact me to return them! Our mother died 25 years ago and her letters dated from her high school and college years, written to her brother, and were irreplaceable.”